Preparing for last weekend derby with Hull Ionians at Brantingham Park, director of rugby Mike Umaga noticed something in recent games that he thought he could exploit. Watching tape of the opposition, he noticed that for the majority of the game, Hull Ionians were still in the game, until the final minute or so. Umaga told his players that if they were still in the game with a minute to go, they could add to their last minute woes. With a minute to go, Hull Ionians led 18-16, but a brilliant short lineout from Mike Jobling to Charlie Beech, who caught the ball well behind the five-metre marker, started a superb move that ended with an eight-pass move from left to tight for David Davison to score the winning try. Just as the director of rugby planned it.
“We saw in the preview that they stuck in games, until the 79th minute or so and then had it snatched away,” Umaga said.
“That had to take its toll and we thought that would be the case if we kept going for 80 minutes.
“You have visions after you train all week, and we trained well. The key word is derby. You take them however they come.
“We spoke about winning parts of the game and we probably won two out of the three. We still have to look at our discipline.
“The two that we won were the set pieces, until he had our injuries.
“I always thought if we could get into their half, we could do something, but we struggled at times to get into their half.
“We had to be cute at lineouts because all our jumpers had come off.
“Heads could have dropped. The boys had to work it out and they stayed calm and they knew what they were going to do. Even I didn’t know it was going there.
“We conceded early, we got back into the game, fell behind again, but kept focused. “We went there to win. It took 80 minutes to do that.”
HULL RUGBY UNION FOOTBALL CLUB 